Chengdu Dialect Phonetic Studies

Chengdu city is located in the southwest of the chengdu plain, is the capital city of Sichuan province, and also is the political,economic, cultural and transportation center. Chengdu has been two thousand years of history from the warring states period when Zhang Yi of Qin dynasty built Chengdu city, and it was southwestern important political, economic and military city in various dynasties. Qing dynasty set up the Eight Banners in Chengdu, and even built the Manchu town for the settlers of the Eight Banners in city center.Chengdu dialect as the core of the Southwestern Mandarin area, more as a representative dialect point of the Sichuan dialect, it is a vital role. However, in the ancient and modern times, monographic studies about Chengdu dialect were extremely rare, but it was more common in the researches of Sichuan dialect as a whole. By the1950s, from Zhen Shangling as the founder, the research of Chengdu dialect has began to have larger development and breakthrough. But for some important details about speech sounds in the long process of the development of Chengdu dialect are less referred, therefore, this paper hope to make more beneficial efforts for researches of Chengdu dialect.This paper is divided into five chapters. The first chapter is the introduction, introduces the background and humanistic geography and historical evolution of Chengdu, and the initials, finals, tones of Chengdu dialect, and research methods and material sources of this paper. The second chapter is about the group of ZhiZhuangZhang initials of Chengdu dialect, firstly describes the characteristics of the group of ZhiZhuangZhang initials of Chengdu dialect, secondly compare the group of ZhiZhuangZhang initials within Sichuan dialect and Southwestern Mandarin with Chengdu dialect, and this chapter specially describes the island of Beijing dialect which ever exsited in Chengdu. The third chapter is about the initials of Ni and Lai, firstly describes the relationship of initials of Ni and Lai in Chengdu dialect, and compares them within Sichuan dialect and Southwestern Mandarin, and illustrates the recent changes about initials of Ni and Lai due to the influence of Chinese Mandarin. The fourth chapter is about Ru tone, firstly illustrates the changes of the second tone from old Ru tone, secondly explains the pronounciation of Ru tone from rhyme groups of XianShan, ShenZhen, DangJiang, ZengGengTong, thirdly compares the Ru tone of Chengdu dialect with nearby dialects, lastly illustrates the changes of Ru tone of Chengdu dialect through several ancient dialect books. The fifth chapter is remaining discussion, discuss the basic dialect about the book of Western Mandarin——The Spoken Language of West China, and put forward my own ideas aiming at the conclusion that this book is the description of Chengdu dialect in the late nineteenth century.